1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an actuator employing flexible cylinders that elastically deform in response to applied fluid pressures, and particularly to an actuator that can easily handle a soft or fragile object or an object having many curved faces.
2. Description of the Prior Art
Robots are widely used in recent years, and there are requirements to develop a robot hand that can easily handle a soft thing such as a fruit and a small animal, a fragile thing such as a glass cup, or a thing having many curved faces such as a ball and a cone. It is also required to transfer an object by fingertips of the robot hand.
Most of conventional robot hands have two fingers, and therefore, are incapable of handling an object which is soft, or fragile, or provided with many curved faces. It is also difficult for the conventional robot hands to transfer an object because it needs a very complicated control algorithm.
Multifinger robot hands now under study involve complicated mechanisms and control algorithms to hardly meet the above requirements.
In this way, the conventional robot hands involve complicated control algorithms and cannot sufficiently handle soft or fragile objects.